Story Magician’s Play Time
Story Magician’s Play Time (SMPT) is a playful, narrative, and vignette-based method developed for hearing young children’s voices. During a SMPT session the participating child chooses one of the pictures shown by the researcher. The pictures depict everyday conflict situations, such as disputes and bullying. Based on the picture, the child tells a story together with the researcher. After storytelling, the child and the researcher play the story using toys. SMPT session is carried out in the child’s own day care centre.
Vignette method
Vignette method is used for exploring school-aged children’s and adolescents’ stories of relational conflicts and exercise of power. The method includes thematic writing based on fictive stories. The participants are shown pictures (see the examples below) or comics about relational conflicts and asked to write stories based on them. They are also asked questions about their story, such as: how the situation started, who participated in it, what kind of feelings the story evoked, how the situation ended and how could the conflict be solved. Vignette method gives children and adolescents not only a possibility to reflect their experiences but also explore conflicts and exercise of power in family and peer relations. The vignette data is collected in co-operation with the participating schools.
Forum theater
Like vignettes, forum theater is used to stimulate storytelling. It is a form of applied drama developed for exploring and disclosing societal problems. The aim is to empower the audience (i.e., the children and adolescents), find solutions and highlight the agency of the individuals. Forum theater is led by an actor who warms up the audience and starts conversation around a chosen theme. This is followed by a small play performed by the actors, after which the audience explores possible solutions to the acted situation. The audience can influence the play by commenting and finding solutions together with the actors. The method aims at engaging the audience by provoking conversation, finding solutions and making the audience see the significance of their own actions.
Observation
Observations are conducted in under-three groups of two day care centres. The aim of observation is to understand conflicts, power use and agency in peer and child-educator relationships from the perspective of young children. Also, we aim at finding ways to enhance young children’s socioemotional wellbeing in early childhood education and care. Observations are carried out by a master’s student and a VALTAKO researcher.
Questionnaires
The VALTAKO project utilizes two national-level survey data sets collected by the Finnish Institute of Health and Welfare. First, our project uses data from a questionnaire Children’s health, wellbeing and services 2018, which has been answered by parents of 4-year-old children, but includes also questions for children. Specifically, we focus on questions concerning children’s social relationships in early childhood education and care, violence and help received, and bullying. The questionnaire also includes the question “What things cause you harm?”, answered by the young children themselves. Second, our project utilizes data from the School Health Promotion Study 2019 collected from 4–5-graders and 8–9-graders. The survey questions used in our project include those concerning bullying, interference and violence, as well as help received and services.
